Museum seeks memories of growing up in Wood River Sears kit houses for book

Linda N. Weller, lweller@civitasmedia.com

Published 5:05 pm, Monday, September 18, 2017

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Museum seeks memories of growing up in Wood River Sears kit houses for book

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WOOD RIVER — The Wood River Heritage Council is seeking residents’ photos and written memories of growing up in Sears, Roebuck and Co., kit houses in that city.

“We hope that enough people will submit responses to this request that a book can be created for the museum, as part of the history of the city,” said Ruth Brooks, who grew up in Wood River and is a volunteer at the Wood River History Museum and Visitors Center, 40 W. Ferguson St., Wood River.

Brooks said the Council particularly is interested in information from people who lived in the houses before the late 1940s.

The Council founded and operates the museum, and also publishes an annual calendar.

The giant catalog company first sold building materials in 1895, then began selling plans for houses in 1908 through its “Modern Home” program. The next year, it began selling kits containing all of the materials needed to construct the houses and other structures. Sears continued to sell thousands of the kits, for a total of 447 styles of homes, until 1940. People also could obtain mortgages or submit plans for a house, with Sears selling them a kit with which to build the structure.

A number of Sears houses in Wood River were featured in a book that former Alton resident Rosemary Fuller Thornton published in 2002, “The Houses That Sears Built: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Sears Catalog Homes.” Thornton, now of Norfolk, Virginia, revised and expanded the book in 2004.

In 2010, Thornton published a second book on the homes, “Sears Homes of Illinois.”